Later today, I’ll be posting a series of stories on the progress of Cal’s plan to pay for the renovation of Memorial Stadium and the Simpson High-Performance Training Center.

I spent several weeks researching the topic, but the situation is so complicated that it couldn’t be fully explained in one story. So I wrote four.

They will all be posted here, and on mercurynews.com. The main story — an overview of the situation — will appear in Tuesday’s editions of the Merc, Contra Costa Times and Oakland Tribune.

Why am I tackling the topic? I wrote about the situation in the spring of ’12, when things began to look grim. And as Hotline readers have seen over the years with my coverage of the Pac-12’s business affairs, I’m interested in what happens off the field/court. (It’s always worthwhile to follow the money.)

Why now? Simple. The Bears had set a self-imposed deadline of June ’13 to secure the funds needed to service $445 million in debt, and they didn’t come close.

This is not news, especially to Cal fans who have followed the situation closely. In fact, the school abandoned the deadline, and the original financing model, last winter.

My goal with this series is to provide perspective: What went wrong, and what does it mean?

Because Cal is a public university, all the relevant information could have been obtained with public records requests. (In that respect, Cal and San Jose State are different than Stanford.)

But I didn’t have to submit any written (formal) requests. The Bears have been incredibly transparent about the shortfall in the sale of high-priced tickets at the heart of their financing plan.

(In fact, you can read their version of the situation here. It’s worth the time.)

Credit for the transparency … and for more exacting methods of tracking the ticket sales … goes to Vice Chancellor John Wilton, who impressed me with his candor and pragmatic approach.

Wilton was hired in Feb. ’11, years after the risky financing plan had been implemented. It quickly became apparent that he had inherited a lemon, and he’s attempting to make lemonade with a revised plan.

Wilton believes the only way to service the debt is to find more sources of income — to diversify revenue streams.

Best I can tell, he’s right.

But the only way to diversify revenue streams is to make use of tens of millions of dollars that, over time, would otherwise have gone to athletic department operations.